Backups? Idiot?

By on September 27th, 2008

Backup Plan

In case you didn’t notice there are no pictures here in the Mephistos blog land this morning. I did not realize it until just a minute ago when I went to finish up a couple of the posts from that I had been working on earlier this week, but now I see that they are all gone. Nothing that WordPress did, and really nothing that I can blame on anyone else or any other 3rd party software package. The big question is what did happen?

I was setting up a new blog for a friend with in my hosting space. There was something that was not working right with the directory structure when I did a fresh install of the WordPress software. Somehow it keep pointing resolving to the wrong directory and instead of showing me a new blog it showed Mephistos. Rather then really trying to take the time figure out why that was the case, I just said screw it. After all I really want all the widgets, plugins, and themes that I have Mephistos available for her to use and to be setup anyway. So, I made a full-blown copy of Mephistos Database(DB) and the PHP scripts in the right location. I knew I was more than smart enough to go into the DB and manually change the directory settings so that I would get the right places and then I could just wipe out the posts, comments, links, etc. with a simple delete or two, but still have the basic skeleton.

My downfall was the automated add media process that has been in WordPress for the last 3 months or so, interestingly enough corresponding with the largest portion of the posts that have been made here on Mephistos. So, as I gleefully deleted out images from “new” blog that I was setting up for someone, little did I realize, those DB entries were still pointing to the actual image storage. And here is the worse thing about it, when I finished I thought, hmm – images, didn’t copy those, actually deleting… better check. And so yesterday at 5:00ish I did and the images on Mephistos were still present. Yes, I thought, I did not make a mistake. Only this morning I realize I was seeing cached images.

Well, the good news is probably have a backup that contains most of those from somewhere up through August or so that will just be a copy over. The rest of them, I probably have the images, but will have to manually upload them through the add media to most easily get the different image sizes and such in the post. That will take a bit of time just so you all know, so expect the images to slowly re-appear over the next day or so.

Lesson Learned: No matter how good you think you are, and no matter how unimportant you think it is, having a backup (plan) is always a good idea.


Categorized under: Blogging, Frustrations, Tech.
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  • Scarlet

    Well crap…..you didnt tell me it was my fault…..or when you did i didnt know what you were talking about.
    Thank you still.

  • http://www.mephistos.com/ rcornish

    It was not your fault – I was the one that made the over site. I was then further the one that proceeding without caution. And lastly, I am the one that should have had everything backed up anyway. Though everything but those particular files are all backed up – is that not the way it always is?